On the seventh anniversary of Grenfell and in the wake of what is emerging in so many other disasters, my thoughts centred around the communities of grief so critical to change, and the many cross disaster themes emerging, particularly risk blindness and risk inequity.
It is the last anniversary before the final Grenfell Inquiry Report is published on the 4th September. This somehow added another layer of complexity to what is always a heavy time.
Now that the anniversary is over, I thought I’d post a couple of things that may be of interest. A link to an Emergency Services Times article I wrote; and a couple of links announcing an alliance of ‘communities of grief’ calling for oversight of recommendations from inquests and inquiries
EST article: Cross disaster themes and a failure to listen and act
Thanks to the Emergency Services Times for inviting me to capture reflections on the seventh anniversary. Link to EST here.
Communities of Grief: An alliance
I’ve been reflecting a lot on the role of communities of grief in enabling change, and was interested to see an alliance between Grenfell, Infected Blood and Covid families calling for a National Oversight Body. As reported on in the Guardian.
Families bereaved by the Grenfell Tower fire, the infected blood scandal and Covid-19 have called on the next prime minister to guarantee that potentially life-saving ideas that emerge from public inquiries and emergency planning exercises are acted upon.
They want a new mechanism to increase public confidence that reports that cost hundreds of millions of pounds to produce won’t gather dust and will instead be followed up. They will issue their joint demand together beneath the ruin of Grenfell Tower after joining hundreds of members of the west London community in a silent march on Friday evening to mark the seventh anniversary of the blaze that killed 72 people, including 18 children.
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jun/14/demand-that-next-pm-ensure-grenfell-public-inquiry-is-acted-on?CMP=share_btn_url
And here a link to a short video posted by Inquest on ‘X’.
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The Grenfell Enquirer 
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